FEAR EBOLA (if you must), BUT KNOW YOUR FACTS FIRST!

I really should be working on a class assignment, but I decided to take a little break from my studies to write a little bit about EBOLA! Yes, Ebola! The dreaded virus responsible for the death of more than 4000 people in West Africa. That same Ebola that has finally been diagnosed and transmitted in Dallas, where I am located. I will be lying if I said that I do not worry about this disease potentially spreading to many more people in the DFW Metroplex. It certainly doesn’t help when I see or hear people sharing unfounded conspiracy theories like the one below:

http://www.theeventchronicle.com/ebola/ghana-ebola-real-people-gotten-sick-got-shots-red-cross/

I am not even going to talk about Chris Brown, who recently shared his Ebola conspiracy theory on Twitter. Avoid the conspiracy theories! We are better able to combat this disease united, than when we focus on unfounded claims about the origins of Ebola.

 I know that I am more likely to be struck by thunder, than to be infected by Ebola. I therefore refuse to be scared into running away from Dallas. I refuse to allow some media organizations scare me out of the city because they are so excited about covering this big news story and have forgotten to do responsible reporting.

                http://www.toondoo.com

As a person who has benefitted both from obtaining a journalism and information science education, I thought it wise to share a little bit of the information I know about Ebola. I hope that this post will help someone learn a little bit more about this very deadly disease.

1)      Ebola is not an airborne disease! You have to come in contact with an Ebola patient’s bodily fluids to get infected by that virus.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html

  http://www.toondoo.com

You are not likely to catch Ebola from breathing the air in Dallas, Liberia or other parts of the world fighting this dreaded disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC),Ebola does not affect water or food, although it has been spread in Africa as a result of handling wild animals hunted for food (such as monkeys) and contact with infected bats (Yuck! I’m scared of bats). 

2)      If you experience the following symptoms, please rush to the hospital immediately. Your chances of beating Ebola are higher with early treatment (mostly hydration).

   

Don’t self-diagnose. I have suffered from typhoid fever before and I experienced all but one of the symptoms listed above (the last one). However, I would rather be put in isolation and then be told I have malaria or typhoid, than to self-diagnose myself and find out I have Ebola at a later date.

  http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/symptoms/index.html

 http://www.toondoo.com

3)     If your neighbor has been put in isolation, there is still a very low probability that you might have contracted the disease.

   http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/health/texas-ebola-outbreak/index.html

                             http://www.toondoo.com

4)      Prevention is always better than cure: I grew up knowing that. It is no different now that we are dealing with Ebola. Keep in mind that there is no FDA approved drug for the disease.

     http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/prevention/index.html

 http://www.toondoo.com

5)      Finally, keep those brave healthcare workers in your thoughts. “Ebola nurse” is also not a name you call patients, especially ones who risked their lives to protect us all. They have names. They are human beings. Respect that.

 http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/exposure/index.html

      http://www.toondoo.com

Most of the information on this page was taken from the CDC website. Please follow this link for more information about Ebola and how to prevent it.

Make your own free cartoons at http://www.toondoo.com

Sharing my Elixir

For my final blog this semester, I have to write about how I make decisions. I decided to have fun with this post, since it might be my last one for a while.

At the beginning of this semester, I shared with my peers in class that I shop when I am happy or need some cheering up. I guess shopping is an “elixir” to me as Robitussin was to people in the past.

On an episode of the show Everybody Loves Chris, a man runs over to Chris’ family house and informs Chris’ mom that one of her kids had been knocked down by a car. As Rochelle runs out to go see her child, she remembers that she has to go take her miracle drug, Robitussin.

Ha!

But I digress. Unable to find a job with a master’s degree in Biology, my elder sister went back to school a couple of years ago to obtain a nursing degree. It’s been a tough journey and I even moved in with her so I could help babysit her son. Well, she will be graduating in two weeks and I am ecstatic! That calls for shopping!

My sister calls me her personal stylist because she does go out shopping often. She therefore put me in charge of buying her graduation outfit. What a huge decision! J Here are the things I have to consider when picking out the items:

Dress: I love colors, but on a serious occasion like a graduation ceremony, I prefer dresses in less flashy and more conservative colors. I think UT Arlington actually mentions that point somewhere on the dress code, but I’m actually picking out what I like.

Shoes: My favorite things to buy. This is where color comes in. Every outfit needs some color and where is a better place to call attention to yourself than your feet!

Jewelry and accessories: They definitely will be the same color as the shoes I ordered. The size will be definitely a struggle between my sister and me, but I will win. I enjoy bigger jewelry pieces.

Above all, whatever I pick has to make her happy. As much as deciding what style or color of dress my sister should wear makes me happy, my aim is to put a smile on her face. That is the biggest and most important factor that drives my decision-making.

Learning a new language. Oh La La

English and French are the official languages of my country, Cameroon. However, depending on what region of the country you hail from, your first language is usually one and not both of them. My parents are English-speaking, thus, English was the first and only language I spoke for the first six to seven years of my life.

How I learned French is however not my focus in this post. Instead, I am writing about my transition from British English to American English. See folks, culture shock is real!  I am used to saying things like: boot and not trunk; biscuits and not crackers and my “Ts” make a sound when I use them. Imagine my four-year-old nephew once corrected me; “Aunty, it is water (transcribed: /ˈwɔtər/) and not water (transcribed: /ˈwôtər’/. 

In the US, I learned pretty quickly that I had to change the way I speak and write English or risk being misunderstood. The saying; “when you go to Rome do what the Romans do” is certainly good advice.

It is very upsetting when people do not understand you even though you speak the same language. I had to learn how to speak and write American English or take the risk of repeating myself numerous times. I read my papers searching for “misspelled” words like neighbour, parlour and labour instead of neighbor, parlor and labor. 

 Thanks for telling & showing us how international students feel Buzzfeed!

I have to say it was and still is a frustrating experience as I have to force myself to fight back from that voice in my head that tells me that I already know English, and that British English is the proper English. Sometimes, it is easier to learn a subject when you approach it with a fresh mind, and that has been my biggest challenge as I work each day toward learning American spellings, figures of speech among other things.

While I may never speak or write American English perfectly, I now find myself in a tough position. To my American friends, I speak English with a foreign flavored accent and to my Cameroonian friends, I don’t sound African anymore. I suppose language has made me a hybrid and most people have a hard time identifying where I come from.

Drawing…It’s all about testing my memory

My assignment this week was to draw the image of a stranger from memory. I had to look at the stranger’s picture for a minute after finding it from the Internet and come up with the sketch. Here’s the original picture I found: 

 And here is what I came up with from drawing:  

I am not an artist, so please do not judge. J

The stranger I drew had some remarkable features. The technique I used to remember his image was association with familiar images and colors. The man on the picture has a well-defined face. He also has a long face, just like my father. The shape of his face was something I remembered because it reminded me of my dad. This stranger also has thick eyebrows, I do not. Thinking of this contrast helped me remember that aspect of the stranger’s face, especially because I wish I had thicker brows. 

For the things I did not remember or notice: I  remembered that the stranger was wearing a colored shirt which I thought was green. I associated the color of his shirt with the UNT color and that helped me remember the shirt he was wearing. Anyway, his shirt looks more turquoise than green. Also, I did not pay attention to the background of the stranger’s picture.  It was blue with some letters going across it. I also did not know that there were buttons on the collar of the man’s shirt, even though I they black and actually quite visible. I actually thought he had more buttons running down the front of his shirt. This forgetfulness of mine can be explained by this National Geographic video that explains how selective the brain is. We therefore are unable to remember information that our brains do not deem valuable after 20 seconds.

References

National Geographic. (n.d.). National geographic: Test your brain episode 3 - memory. Retrieved from http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq2gon_national-geographic-test-your-brain-episode-3-memory_shortfilms

Ha! My evolution as a learner…a journey from high school to grad school

I believe in working smart, not working too hard. That is a philosophy that I incorporate into my studies. This does not mean that I don’t commit 100 percent to my studies; it simply means that I have adopted learning techniques which make learning less strenuous for me.           

I knew from an early age that I loved stories. I was that student who read a novel assigned to high school students seven years before I was assigned that novel for a class. One learning strategy that I have used over the years has been to make stories out of my lessons. Stories are fun to remember and they have certain elements that help make them more memorable; such as: conflict, characters and the progression of the plot. I study subjects that appeal to me and that way, I can take on the role of the character(s). That helps me remember the things that are important to me. As fate would have it, I now teach a storytelling class which makes learning fun and memorable for our students.

Another learning technique that works for me is attending my classes and taking down notes. In high school, I tried to write down almost every word that my professors said in class. Luckily, that worked for me. However, I realized as the years went by, especially in graduate school that concentrating on writing so much actually distracted me. Now I listen more during lectures and only write down concepts and ideas that I may have had a hard time understanding when I read through my textbooks. Reading the short notes I take in class helps me remember my lectures.

“…Anything less than six hours—hurts women more than it does men” – Thanks, CNN!

I just had to use that quote from an article I read on cnn.com yesterday. You might be wondering why I started off this post with a quote from an article on heart health. Well, February is Heart Month in America. One of the things our hearts and brains need to function better is sleep. I have been taking Luminosity’s training exercises for the past 12 days and it’s been interesting to see how much better I’ve gotten as the days go by (most of those days).

My score on the first day of training was not great. I blame that on the medium being new to me. My speed, identification and retention of elements spiked up after that and I was on a continuous rise for days after that. However, three days ago, my sleep patterns changed. I slept late and woke up early. My Brain Performance Index stalled for the first time. Today, I even got less sleep, I feel grumpy, and I’m rocking a slight headache. My BPI dipped by 15 points L

On the good days, I noticed that I was paying attention to more than one thing because of the games Luminosity offered me. I would look out for birds and letters shown on different parts of the screen at the same time. I got to solve math problems given to me in raindrops that went down on my screen in seconds, and I also had to memorize patterns and repeat what I had seen on the screen.

I can therefore state that the daily use of activities offered by Luminosity helped me, and could help many other users memorize important facts, increase task speed and accuracy and solve problems. One of the instances when those activities might not help might involve sleep deprivation. Maybe someone needs to find out if a sleep-deprived woman’s cognitive processes slow down more than it does in a sleep-deprived male.

And so in honor of American Heart Month, y’all get some sleep!

Reference

Christensen, J. (2014, February 13). Women: 5 ways to protect your heart. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/13/health/women-heart-health/index.html?sr=fb021314womanhearthealth2p

Don't judge- It's all about perception!

I find myself doing this so often. Heck, I recently went out of my way at my local grocery store to have a second and long look at an interesting outfit I saw on some unknown lady. I stare. But usually, I don’t get caught. If I did, I might keep my curiosity to myself, but I think I have mastered the art of staring.

Just yesterday, I went to the Green Mountain coffee shop on UNT’s main campus. I bought my favorite beverage, a caramel macchiato and moved away from the shop. The sitting area just next to it was lightly occupied. About seven students, mostly male were seated there. Some studying, others discussing with friends. I found a seat far away from everyone else and took out a book and pen. At first it looked like I was writing, then reading, but all I was doing was drawing circles in anticipation of the staring match I was about to begin.

Then I found my muse. She had interesting hair like I sometimes do. It was dyed green (I usually stick with red). I think I chose her because she had dared to look different from everyone else. And so I looked at her face, my pen in my mouth for a long time as she toyed with her phone. She did not look up for a while. I stared some more. And then the moment I dreaded happened. She lifted her head and caught me watching. My reflex action was to turn my face.